


Invisible Friends

by megamagi



Series: Diary of a Memory [1]
Category: Touhou Project
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-02
Updated: 2020-09-02
Packaged: 2021-03-06 20:54:25
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 824
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26255242
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/megamagi/pseuds/megamagi
Summary: Someone who doesn't exist meets someone who only exists subconsciously.
Series: Diary of a Memory [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2050476
Comments: 3
Kudos: 21





	Invisible Friends

Your name is Rin Satsuki. You like playing the erhu. You're friends with the witch and the shrine maiden. You need to investigate the red mist coming out of that mansion.

That's all she knew when she was 'born'. She's still not sure if 'born' was even the right word for it or not. She didn't exist one moment, and the next she did, suddenly being in a forest somewhere with only the vaguest of memories.

She had looked around, and she was in a forest, and she did see red mist in the sky. There were some fairies flying to and fro, shouting and shooting danmaku everywhere, but none of them seemed to acknowledge her.

Before long, she met the witch. Marisa. She'd never met before but she knew it was her. She tried introducing herself...and Marisa ignored her and kept going. So did Reimu. It was like she wasn't even there. She followed them, and they never noticed her.

She watched their adventure. She watched them weave through bullets, defeat everyone who was between them and the vampire. She knew she was supposed to be a part of this, but she couldn't participate. She wanted to help. She really did! But it felt like someone was creating a beautiful portrait of their adventure, but they didn't bother finishing her, just leaving one bit of a rough sketch in the middle of the painting.

The incident was solved. The mist was cleared. The vampire was invited to tea. Marisa went back to the forest, Reimu went back to her shrine, and Rin was left alone.

She wasn't sure where to go. She had no idea what was supposed to happen next.

She wanted to figure out what she was. At first she thought she might be a ghost, but Gensokyo's a land where you can walk down the street and invite someone to tea, and nobody's ever invited **her** to tea, so that's probably not it. She tried looking through that library in the mansion, but the few books she understood had nothing to do with her.

After a while, she gave up, and resigned herself to being an observer.

Sometimes, she would see danmaku fights, and 'join', weaving through the bullets. Not that they could hurt her, or she could affect the fight, but she could pretend what they would feel like.

She spent most of her time playing her erhu. It was hard to judge how good she was without an audience. She'd like to think she was good at it, though. Once she walked through the human village. She saw two old men walking out of a restaurant, talking about a rumor they had heard about music coming from the forest. That made her happy. Even if it was nothing more than a rumor, she chose to believe it was because of her.

One day, she found herself wandering through the caves she followed her 'friends' through once, into the palace at the far end of them.

There were a lot of animals hanging around in the palace. One of them, a cat...not the bakeneko. A normal cat, as far as she could tell, stopped what it was doing to stare at her. Well, maybe it was staring at her. Maybe it just saw some interesting dirt on the wall behind her. You never can be too sure with cats. But it wandered away before too long, leaving her with no answers.

In a remote corner of the palace, she found a room that looked like it was dressed up for a tea party. There were stuffed animals and dolls sitting around it, and each one had a empty teacup in front of it. But for some reason, there was one full teacup in front of an empty chair.

She frowned, staring at the room. Maybe whoever set this up just got pulled away without finishing their tea or cleaning it up. But there was something about it that made her feel sad.

Looking at the empty cup in front of the empty chair, it made her feel like someone had painted a beautiful tea party, but just left one of the chairs as a rough sketch. It reminded her of herself somehow.

Maybe, just maybe, there was someone who had the same problem she did. She knew it was impossible...but she called out to the empty room anyway.

...But nobody came.

She sighed and mentally berated herself for getting her hopes up. She turned to leave...but out of the corner of her eye, she thought she saw two full teacups.

She returned to the clearing she called home, and started playing her erhu again. But as she finished the song, she heard something. It was probably a bird, or maybe a distant knock on a distant door. Or, if she pretended...someone clapping.

She smiled as she started another song, feeling a little less lonely.

**Author's Note:**

> this was gonna be an undertale crossover originally where she met gaster but maybe i'll write that later


End file.
